What will happen to the sole survivor of the Italian cable car crash?

• Author: ROSSELLA TERCATIN
• Published date: 23 September 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Sunday, May 23 appeared to mark the perfect moment for a day trip in Pavia, where the Biran family used to live. The sun was shining and many COVID restrictions had just been lifted, allowing tourist sites to reopen.

Amit Biran, 30, had come to Italy to study medicine several years earlier. He lived with his wife, Tal Peleg, 27, and their two children, Eitan and two-year-old Tom, in the town some 35 km. south of Milan and renowned for its university, which attracts many Israelis. The Birans also held Italian citizenship through an Italian ancestor of Tal's.

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That Sunday was special also because Tal's grandparents, the children's great-grandparents, Barbara Cohen Konisky, 71, and Itshak Cohen, 82, had arrived from Israel for a visit a few days earlier.

The family decided to visit a little corner of paradise about an hour and a half drive from Pavia: Stresa, a town on the Lake Maggiore shores. Since the beginning of the 1970s, among its most popular attractions, Stresa had offered a cable car connecting the lake with the top of the nearby Mottarone mountain, in about 20 minutes. For the Birans, it promised to be a memorable experience.

The family boarded the gondola together with another nine people – couples celebrating anniversaries and birthdays, other families enjoying the sunny Sunday, all ready to spot the breathtaking views.

The day ended in the worst tragedy.

As the cabin was approaching the station on the top of Mottarone, just a few centimeters before it came to a full stop, the gondola started to slide down. Within a few seconds it gained speed up to over 100 km./hour, until it plunged into the ground several hundred meters lower.

As the cabin crashed, all passengers were killed on the spot, except the two five-year-olds, Eitan Biran and Mattia Zorloni.

Both of them were rushed on two helicopters to Ospedale Regina Margherita, a children's hospital in nearby Turin. Since they did not have any documents on them, they were admitted as "unknown" patients, with no parents by their side.

Mattia was in critical condition, and he was sedated. He succumbed to his injuries a few hours later.

Eitan was rushed into surgery. In the accident, he had sustained head and thoracic traumas and had multiple fractures in his legs.

"I'm scared, leave me alone," he told the doctors before he was also sedated.

As the names of the...